"Visitor arriving. On yer feet! Ye have five minutes."
The man inside the cell stood, his bloody ragged clothing falling about him. Nearing the cell door, his eyes focused upon the newfound inlet of light into his environment. A voice whispered from the other side of the cell.
"Throm! Are you okay?"
Still shaking the haze from his head, Throm recognized the voice of his younger brother and looking down at his tattered clothing lied.
"Yes I am fair enough I suppose...but where the hell are we? And how did I end up in this cell? Last I knew we were being attacked by air pirates."
A sniff of understanding was the only sound Throm heard from the other side of the door. His head was pounding, and the fresh cuts on his body told him that he had not been in this place for very long.
"Well, that explains your magnificent landing I guess. We are within a Vectorian Fortress at the moment. You see...you're in quite a spot of trouble brother. When the Bastion crashed, it landed upon a small logging camp deep in the woods. Unfortunately, many workers were killed including a visiting official from the city...a friend of someone high up on the food chain they say. You are currently in the lowest level of their dungeon...only way I could get in was to convince them that I was a liason from Tripower come to finalize our records on you."
Throm grimaced. He had not meant to take lives without cause. The last thing he could remember before blacking out had been trying in vain to regain control of the Bastion. He realized that he must have blacked out at an amazing altitude to have reached the heart of the forest. Vector had never been a forgiving nation, and Throm had always spent as little time as possible there since the war had ended. The voice of Mavin from the other side of the door spoke up once again.
"That's not the worst of it Throm, when they dragged your body out of the Bastion, you were still wearing your cloak. Knowing that you were a member of the Syndicate, they suspected that you intended to crash the ship into the camp to assassinate the official. No doubt they intend to execute you."
"What of Avalon? And the Bastion as well?"
"No trace of Avalon. And the Bastion is pretty broken up, not to mention they have about half an army crawling around her until they receive orders on how to proceed."
Throm rubbed the knot on the back of his head and contemplated his current position. He had attempted to escape via magic the moment he awoke, but an unseen antimagic field had prevented him from doing so. He had searched for weaknesses within the cell itself and had found none. The Syndicate would no doubt hear of this, but would consider the possibility that Throm had in fact proceeded with a private assassination, the best he could hope for on their end was no retaliation from the Vector Nation. Looking back up to the small set of bars on the door he spoke.
"Magic. Are you able to harness the Weave from out there?"
"Yes of course. I have had no troube since arriving."
Throm nodded to himself, noting that this may be the chance he needed.
"Okay, listen closely. I overheard this morning that the guards mean to change my cell tonight. They are bringing in some poor sod from the eastern continent to stay here. During the move, can you provide me a distraction? Oh and...heh...perhaps a small acid blast?"
Long ago, Mavin had stopped asking for the details which ran through Throm's mind. Either it would work, or it would fail miserably...that's how it had always been.
"Of course...now I'd best be off before a real liason shows up"
A small chuckle marked the departure of Throm's guest. Throm leaned back down from the door and limped his way over to the small bench that had been his bed for the past day...two days? It was getting hard to tell. With a sharp exhale, he sat upon the bench and let his head rest against the cold stone wall behind him. He hoped that all was well with Avalon, the fact that they had not found a body was encouraging. Closing his eyes, Throm tried to catch a small bit of rest.
"Ok, we'll have to come back for him. Avalon, drop the cargo."
Throm sat into the helm, adjusting the controls to manual setting. With a great plummet, the Bastion shot down into the clouds below parting them like a knife.
"If we can make it to Port Vector we'll be fine."
No sooner had Throm let the words escape his lips than the ship rocked hard to it's starboard side, the shockwave of the enemy's weapon blowing out the Observation Window. The Helm Room exploded as the hatch itself blew apart, the impact throwing Throm from the helm and onto the floor.
Looking upwards through hazy eyes, he looked upwards towards the hatch. A blurred figure stood within the Helm Room, Throm blinked and he was gone.
"Avalon! Take him!"
~I cannot kill, what I cannot see~
The frustrated reply rang out through Throm's mind. Picking himself up from the floor he grasped the ship's controls attempting to shake free from the invading ship, but to no avail. Locking the controls into auto, he scrambled to the decks below, a single destination in mind. Throwing himself into the Armoury, he grabbed the strap of a large backpack. A shout rang from the upper decks.
"Sorry for the mess, you're stuff is at the Helm."
Throm grit his teeth. He had no concern for the items upstairs, they were merely trinkets. All the same, he wondered why the intruder had not made off with it replying
"All's fair in war right?"
Throm let loose a sigh and dropped the pack to the ground, grabbing the wall as the ship shook once again from it's damages. A slight breeze passed upon Throm's face and the faintest of whispers was heard.
"Thanks..."
The Backpack was gone.
Swearing, Throm looked around himself wildly. Launching up the stairs into the Helm Room. Avalon appeared within the large hole where the hatch once was.
~The ship is departing. It was a Ram-Duster, the name on it's hull is Stealthbomber~
The Bastion shuddered again, as if slowly dying, leaving Throm to realize that retrieving his items were among the least of his present concerns. He lept back into the helm controls and attempted to stabilize the ship's flight pattern. The control panels were going berserk with warnings and alarms.
"There's no telling to what extent the dama-"
Again the ship shudderd, this time screeching as it's primary lift engines seized. The world turned upside down as the Bastion plummeted towards the ground before all went dark.
~Nothing...~
That was exactly what the last two months of searching had brought about. Not so much as a glimmer of a clue to the mystery he had so painstakingly been attempting to unravel since his journey to Candlekeep.
Throm tore himself away from the Makou Radar and paced his way over to the Observation Deck where he stood musing silently at the cloud cover far below. On one hand he had made progress delving into the ongoing search for clues on his Twilight Marauder. He had gone over the scrolls once again and had found to his surprise that he had misinterperated the scriptures from the beginnig. The Great Evil from the west, had in fact been The Great Legacy from the east. This had changed things....changed things a lot. Throm had needed to put his marauder mystery on hold for quite some time now. On hold so as to fulfill a personal duty to the Stormweather family.
His mind returned to the stone cobble at Candlekeep and the name which disappeared from it's records of death.
Nathaniel Stormweather
The name had re-appeared and disappeared two additional times under the watch of Avalon. Something that unnerved the scribes of Candlekeep nearly as much as Throm himself. Through the Stormweather family, Throm had traced the last voyage of young Nathaniel to the western Sea of Swords, and since then had spent many days and sleepless nights scouring that very same Sea with the Bastion for clues. Two months later, and two months further fed up, the Bastion and her crew found themselves in Vector territory for resupply.
~If you keep staring out that window, you're never going to get anywhere.~
Throm smirked to himself, having forgot for the moment that the Shou Dragon could trace his thoughts....even from outside of the airship.
~Avalon, you'll never understand just how rude...~
![RED ALERT]!
Throm's thoughts were cut short as the ship's lights turned to red and the panels began blinking wildly. Through the Observation Window, a dark ship could be seen bursting full speed from the clouds below.
Throm ran to the helm and scanned the readout, muttering.
"Three Earth Splitters, and a reinforced hull...we're no match..."
He activated the loudspeaker as Avalon came swooping through the hatch.
"Mavin report! We need to get out of here. Drop the cargo so we can teleport!"
Avalon steadied himself on the deck, securing the hatch behind him.
~He is still groundside gathering supplies, we'll have to come back for him~